Empty Nest

We're back to just the two of us now. Cliff flew off to San Francisco last night and Phil just left for SeaTac this afternoon. We had 4 good days of family togetherness. That seems about right. We miss our sons, but know that we have grown independent of each other and longer visits are not necessarily better visits. Cliff is hosting a New Year's Eve party in his new apartment. He's excited about that. He may not have enough furniture for his crowd, but I'm sure he has a plan. As he reminded us, he was an event planner at Stanford for a few years and knows how to put on a party. Phil will get organized to get started back to school. He's having new tires put on his car tomorrow so I'll stop worrying about him driving in bad weather. He'll pick up Tally the cat and go back to Bellingham and his cozy apartment. He also has new books and DVD's to watch. He, like
Cliff, is interested in more intellectual books now, but still turns to escapist activities such as video games.

Larry has a week of vacation left. We want to do some hiking. The weather here turned colder and cloudy, so we'll probably wait a couple of days to do that. We have new books to read and DVD's to watch, so I'm sure we'll have a nice, relaxing time.